


Cytherea-was-right.jpg

by toadami



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Moral Ambiguity, no I will not justify my weakness for evil milfs, sometimes you kidnap your crush and try to convince her to overthrow god, who is also her dad, yes this fic is hornier than strictly necessary
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-16 06:41:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29946012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toadami/pseuds/toadami
Summary: What if Gideon had taken Cytherea up on her offer of mercy?
Relationships: Cytherea the First/Gideon Nav
Comments: 9
Kudos: 30





	1. Beg For It

**Author's Note:**

> I really would have liked to get more time with Cytherea after she came out as a Lyctor. This will get very philosophical in later chapters, so if you hated Cytherea or like black and white morals...this ain't the fic for you. Silas Octakiseron do NOT interact.

“Cry mercy,” said Cytherea. The dimple was still there. “Please. You don’t even know what you are to me...You’re not going to die here, Gideon. And if you ask me to let you live you might not have to die at all.’ 

The words filled Gideon with something beyond rage, and yet…she hesitated. 

She spared half a glance backward to her necromancer, bleeding from a dozen wounds and holding the pile of broken limbs that was Camilla Hect. 

As if sensing her hesitation, Cytherea the First smiled graciously and waited as well, allowing Gideon the space to make this decision. The Ninth cavalier wanted to say no. She wanted to shove her broadsword up this ancient broad’s ass. She wanted to scream about the fourth house and the fifth, then boldly fight until her inevitable death. 

But if she died, there would be no one to protect Harrowhark or Camilla, or somewhere in the monstrosity of this building, Coronabeth. If they were being honest, Gideon was the last real line of defense, and even she wouldn’t stand a shadow of chance against the Lyctor in front of her. 

“If I do, will you spare them?” 

You could have heard a pin drop in the courtyard. She did, in fact, hear several pieces of house-rubble drop to the ground in the ensuing silence. 

“You said this was all about getting the attention of the Emperor. Well, you’ve killed over half of the heirs to the Houses. I think at this point he’s either coming or he’s not. End it here, and I’ll surrender, and we can sit here like good hostages and see if he’s on his way.” 

Cytherea tilted her head and considered the words, rolling them around in her head like a child might roll a sweet piece of candy in her mouth. Her vibrant eyes twinkled at Gideon with something akin to admiration. The cavalier tried to shove down the way that approving look from the woman she’d been crushing on until like, half an hour ago, made her feel. 

“Gideon Nav, you truly are a sweetheart. I accept! But you have to promise to be very compliant, or I’ll be forced to do rather nasty things to your necromancer.” She relaxed her stance from rapier at-the-ready to point facing the earth, knees no longer bent slightly as if ready to spring forward. Before she fully let down her guard, Cytherea pleasantly added, “Now, in the spirit of caution, I’d like for you to prove your sincerity and beg me for it.” 

To ensure no one else died? Gideon swallowed her pride and fell to the ground without hesitation. 

“Please. Please have mercy on us, Dul—Cytherea. We don’t stand a chance against you. Spare us.” 

Gideon shuffled forward on her knees so she could implore pathetically with better eye contact. Her darling opponent stared back at her with fascination and something else intense and unreadable. 

Whatever. The Lyctor could get off on this memory later for all she cared, as long as it saved everyone. She threw herself into the performance, all but clutching at the hems of Cytherea’s makeshift bedsheet dress. 

“I am begging you, _please._ I don’t want to die here.” 

Cytherea appeared to her for a moment terribly, terribly old, like all the ten thousand years of her coalesced into one moment. Then she blinked, shook out her curls, and was the version Gideon knew again. 

“Alright dear, I believe you. Let’s see, I have limited space in my contingency plan, so who should I take?” 

Cytherea bounced lightly over to Harrowhark and Camilla, and looked them over, musing out loud as she did so. Gideon’s adept looked like she was struggling to decide whether to spit viciously on the Lyctor, or cry. Camilla, to her eternal credit, regarded Cytherea coolly—especially for someone who had part of her own bone sticking out of one arm. 

When Cytherea reached out and _touched_ said bone, Gideon did not hold it against the Sixth cavalier at all for letting out a grunt and promptly passing out. 

“The damage is mostly superficial. She’ll be alright, which is good because I’m not going to waste any time healing someone I don’t need.” she announced to the courtyard like a teacher assigning groups for a project. Her blue eyes turned to Harrowhark’s huddled form. 

“You, on the other hand, I will take as insurance.” 

Cytherea the First proved just how good an actress she’d been this whole time at Canaan House pretending to be feeble and weak, by reaching forward with one hand and picking Nonagesimus up by her shirtfront as if it was nothing. 

The short necromancer’s feet kicked surprisedly in the air for a second, and then she seemed to resign herself to her fate and let the older woman carry her past Gideon over to the grayed out husk that was Ianthe Tridentarius.

Gideon wasn’t a fool. The Reverend Daughter had never resigned herself to anything without some ulterior plan, especially if it involved being made undignified. 

Sure enough, in the confused bit of settling as Cytherea put her unceremoniously down, Nav spied a flicker of movement as Harrow furtively slipped something into the folds of the Lyctor’s sheet-toga. Knowing her, it was probably a bone. 

After dropping Nonagesimus, she addressed Ianthe. 

“You I will take because you’ve done something terrible and deserve something terrible in return. Don’t worry, I won’t use you as a battery again, little sister. I’m not a monster.” 

There was no response from the prone form on the ground, but Cytherea seemed satisfied. 

“Gideon, come here please. Slowly.” 

Gideon did as she was told. She admired her necromancer’s grit in stashing something on the Lyctor, but not her survival instincts. She herself was not going to risk angering this woman, as much as she despised her in the moment. 

Terribly, it was hard to muster up that hate when she looked Cytherea in the eyes and saw no animosity. She saw a mild apology in them even, as if an uncomfortable favor was about to be asked. 

“I’m sorry Gideon, but I’m going to tie you up now, okay? Hold out your arms for me—no, like this. Thank you, that’s better.” 

The cavalier’s wrists were gently led to the right position, and then the Lyctor drew forth some kind of tendon-like material from said wrist to efficiently bind Gideon’s hands together. She tested the strength with morbid fascination. It did not give. 

Cytherea then squatted down to Harrowhark and smiled at her. 

“Your turn! I don’t think that would work on you at all, huh? You’d melt that away in an instant. Of course, most of this is for show—I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how badly it will go if you try anything on me, Ninth. Safety first, though.” 

She then ripped off a piece of her bedsheet with a flourish and tied Harrowhark’s arms straight against her sides, not together, Gideon noted. She wasn’t sure whether to be insulted or angry on her necromancer’s behalf. She kept quiet. 

When the Lyctor neatly patted Harrow down, however, occasionally pulling forth scraps of bone, and her nun gave a little gasp of indignation and tinged red from either embarrassment or fury, Gideon couldn’t take it. 

“Don’t you think that’s a bit much? We surrendered, promised to be peaceful. I’m doing everything you ask. Let her have her dignity. Please.” 

Cytherea’s hands paused from where they were probing the ribcage Harrowhark had affixed to herself like a favorite hoodie. She turned toward Gideon thoughtfully. 

“You really are completely devoted to her, huh? Well, I always love a diligent cavalier. I wonder, Gideon. Would you have let her devour you? Utterly destroy you, so she could achieve Lyctorhood?” 

Gideon’s mouth was dry. Everything had been happening so quickly that day, she really hadn’t had time to process what Lyctorhood meant or if it was something that Harrowhark was still seeking. She wanted to say no, absolutely not, but given Naberius’s fate, would it have even been a choice? 

After a moment of silence, Cytherea gave her a sad smile. 

“Anyway, we’ll have lots of time to discuss that later. I think you were right in that the Undying Son of a Bitch isn’t going to come back to Dominicus, even if I destroyed all the Houses one by one.” With the dark look on her face, she seemed truly capable of it for a second. 

“But it’s okay! It’s all okay because I have you, my dear Gideon, and we have so much to do together! It’ll be a fun little girls’ trip. Let me just get my old shuttle from where I stashed it before dropping the rest off the edge of the cliff, and we can get started.” 

She tossed Ianthe over her shoulder with ease, and dragged Harrowhark to her feet with the other hand. 

“Who wants to learn how to kill God?”


	2. It Goes Like This: The Fourth, The Fifth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A quandry is presented by a possibly untrustworthy narrator.

Gideon sat huddled on the floor of the cockpit and tried to drink the tea Cytherea had handed her. It was difficult considering she was handcuffed to the arm of the co-pilot seat, but she made do. 

The Lyctor had just taken her tray of warm beverages into the back, presumably to offer to Harrow and Ianthe (oh how Gideon wished she was back there with them), so she had a brief moment alone to reflect. 

There were many concerns that she might have reflected on, but the one her mind went back to most often was when Cytherea the First had tried to pick up her broadsword. It couldn’t have been the weight that was the problem, as she’d barely put one hand on it before she leapt back and screamed as if burned. 

Following that, she promptly vomited up a long stream of clotted blood. Then the Lyctor had tossed her head back and laughed a long, wondrous laugh. 

“Is that where you’ve been hiding all these years, you old demon? Well this is perfect.” 

Then, and this was the strangest part, she’d glanced at Gideon and said: 

“Family reunions are always so deliciously messy.” 

That was it. She refused to touch the sword afterward, apparently somehow preferring to trust her captive to wield it all the way to the ship. Cytherea had, of course, phrased it like a request, asking if she would “be a dear” and carry the sword to the ship “like a good cav.” 

Well, that had stirred a mix of emotions in her, but thankfully the Ninth had brewed plenty of experience in repression, so it sounded like something for Future Gideon to unpack. 

Right now, she wanted to focus on how a sword could be involved in a family reunion. Surely the sword itself didn’t have a family? Could swords have families? Maybe Cytherea had known another sword made by the same, uh, sword-maker, and they had a rough history? Maybe Gideon’s sword had been used to kill someone during a family reunion before and the brunette could sense it with her Lyctor powers? 

Was that a power that Lyctors had? They were all about death, like most necromancers. 

Gideon struggled for a moment to remember if Harrow had ever shown the ability to tell the greater context of someone’s death just from the murder weapon. Her train of thoughts was fruitless, and eventually the Lyctor in question came bustling back through the door. 

She had changed clothes, and now sported a springy green dress that poofed down to her knees, with a tiny denim jacket over top. Cytherea plopped down into the captain’s chair, sighed, looked over the knobs and lights in front of her, then swiveled in her chair to face her prisoner with a tired smile. 

“Gideon. Are you comfortable?” 

“Uhhh honestly? No.”

Cytherea seemed upset at that. She pouted her lower lip a little bit— _not_ cutely, Gideon told herself—and looked her captive's seating situation up and down. 

“No, I don’t suppose that looks very comfortable.” She seemed to debate with herself. “Look, you’ve really been quite well-behaved, and I did make you beg for mercy, so maybe I should be a bit more trusting. It’s hard, after all these years, to remember what humans need.” 

No. Gideon was absolutely not going to let her get away with this. With acting like this was all a big oopsie daisy and she was anything other than the callous creature that killed so many of her friends. 

“You certainly seem to understand what they need to die. Let me give you some advice, though. Three dozen stab wounds is more than enough to take down a 13 year old boy. The fourth dozen was just overkill.” 

Gideon internally flinched at her own words and the memories they brought to her mindseye, all the blood she couldn’t scrub out of the crevasses of her brain. 

Something somber settled into Cytherea’s blue eyes, like the shadow of a behemoth rising to the surface of the ocean to swallow a ship. 

“The only thing I regret about killing the Fourth House is that I didn’t get both of them at the same time. Whether you believe it or not, I took no joy in what I did, and wished to cause no more suffering than necessary.” 

Gideon scoffed. 

“Yeah, I don’t believe that. Painting threats in someone’s blood doesn’t seem like the sort of thing you do for clinical duty. 

Cytherea leaned forward, animated. 

“Perhaps you should consider yourself lucky, Ninth, that you haven’t had that kind of duty asked of you yet. I have done far worse things than what I did at Canaan House, without question, at the beck and call of a man I loved and worshiped. As if that justified it. Well, I don’t feel a bit of remorse at taking those two.” 

The Lyctor put a palm to her forehead and sighed heavily. 

“Gideon, allow me the chance to explain?” Cytherea looked up searchingly, as if actually asking permission to speak. Gideon wondered what would happen if she refused. Instead, to appease her captor and maybe a little so not used to being _asked_ for things she couldn’t help but give in, she nodded mutely.

“Thank you,” Cytherea said, and it sounded fucking sincere. 

“This may sound odd to you, but from my perspective, the Fourth House teens were already dead. Everyone’s already dead to me. I’ve lived for ten thousand years, Gideon. They’re all ghosts, even the ones who aren’t yet, because sometimes I blink and cities have died or been raised up and babies that I’ve held have grandchildren now. 

“But in a much more real sense, darling, those two were already dead because they _were_ from the Fourth House, and they would have been part of the Cohort by now if it weren’t for this dastardly Lyctor business.” 

Gideon furrowed her eyebrows. 

“I know they looked cute, Gideon, but if they had had their way Isaac and Jeannemary would have been killers by now.” Here she trailed off in thought. “It’s so easy to forget, with all the propaganda and the addicting rush of thanergy, but all the lives on these planets we’re conquering, they’re _real_. They mean something. They have souls.” 

Cytherea looked down at her imploringly with those big doe eyes, now looking a little moist. 

"What future was truly ahead of that pair? Would you prefer I'd let it go on until Isaac killed Jeannemary and consumed her soul for his own power? Or maybe they could have gone home in disgrace, at least allowed to enjoy their inheritance of dealing out death until someone dealt it out to them?" 

"No, it's not that simple!" Gideon shook her head so violently it rattled the chains around her wrists. Cytherea's fancy words were fogging her brain with their implications, but even though she didn't know the right words to respond with, she knew it was _wrong_ somehow. It had to be.

If only her adept were beside her. The Reverend Daughter always had a slew of fancy words at the ready, and could have found the perfect counterargument to this awful version of events. 

"The Fourth aren't cannon fodder," she began haltingly. "When they die, it's for a worthy cause. To protect others." 

Cytherea the First looked at Gideon as if she were a child who had to be informed her puppy had just died, and got off her chair to crouch on Gideon's level, one hand tentatively reaching out to touch her shoulder. This close, the Njngh cavalier could smell her familiar flowery perfume. 

"Isaac told you him and all his siblings were born from a vat womb, yes? They came from frozen embryos because his parents had already died for their respective worthy causes. Well, I looked into the public records of the heirs before I came here. Do you know how old his parents were when they passed?" 

Cytherea continued to look at her with painful sympathy. 

"His mother was 17. His father only made it to 16. They had never met each other." 

Horrified, Gideon stared at her. Was this really true?

"I trust that Anastasia would have never done such a thing, but in the Fourth House when you hit a certain age you are required to donate genetic material, in case of an untimely demise. For a while there was a movement to extend the age to exclude minors, but certain influential Cohort officials quashed that effort. Heaven forbid anything that might marginally diminish their thanergy supply." 

Cytherea looked bitterly into the distance, and Gidron wondered if she had been part of the failed movement to change the law. 

Her dainty hand was cold on the redhead's shoulder. It felt vaguely reminiscent of a skeleton construct. 

"Now Isaac was known for being cautious, so maybe he would have lived to be twenty. Or he could have lived forever, for the small price of massacring his best friend's eternal soul.

"Tell me Gideon, which of those scenarios would you have preferred for him?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, FUCK the empire. That's all.


End file.
